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For smallholder agriculture to prosper and transform itself, access to rural services is essential. Rural services that enable smallholders to overcome constraints to increase their productivity, manage their farms as a sustainable business, link to inputs and outputs markets and act collectively to improve their livelihoods are a first line of action to reduce rural poverty. Undoubtedly, improving rural services has long been on the development agenda. Yet, ensuring equitable access to rural services remains a challenge that governments and their development partners need to address to improve rural livelihoods and overcome rural poverty. The pluralistic Market-Oriented Services (MOS) programme [...]

A solid understanding of domestic political economy helps to promote policies that are better adapted to country realities. The challenges that many governments faced in responding to food price volatility during the 2008 global food crisis re-focused attention on the political economy and implementing effective national policy responses on food security and nutrition. Understanding the political economy behind public policy-making and implementation is crucial to enhancing the effectiveness of policy support to countries and increases the chances of nationally-led reforms that result in better food security and nutrition outcomes. This political economy analysis note is intended to support policy practitioners [...]

Social protection plays an important role in protecting poor and vulnerable people from natural hazards saving lives and livelihoods, while also enhancing families’ capacity to cope, respond and withstand threats and crises. Moreover, risk-informed and shock-responsive social protection systems enhance the resilience and decrease the vulnerability of the agricultural livelihoods, absorbing part of the humanitarian caseload. FAO is currently scaling-up its commitment in the field of Risk-Informed and Shock-Responsive Social Protection through evidence generation, policy support, direct implementation in emergency contexts and capacity development. FAO, together with the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, is developing an interactive learning tool to [...]

This document explores experiences with aquatic protected areas building on work presented at the IUCN World Parks Congress (WPC) held in Sydney, Australia, on 12–19 November 2014, in the context of livelihoods and food security. It includes: (i) ten papers reporting on the interface of MPA/protected areas with livelihoods and food security, based on case studies in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Oceania; (ii) an eleventh contribution providing a more general overview of MPAs and food security and how to assess their impact; and (iii) a final paper synthesizing the conclusions of the papers and discussing the observed outcomes of aquatic PAs, together with problems and solutions. [...]

The present study is a gender assessment of the dairy value chain in selected sites in Ethiopia: North Shoa Shewa (Degem woreda), East Gojam (Dejen woreda) and Gamu Gofa Arba Minch (Arba Minch Zuria woreda). It relies on evidence gathered through fieldwork complemented by a review of specialized background documentation. The findings confirm that women’s empowerment is vital for sustainable dairy value chain development and that projects supporting dairy production need to increase their efforts to be gender inclusive. The study provides country-specific recommendations for Ethiopia, which also feed into a more general knowledge base on how to develop gender-sensitive dairy value chains.

This report provides an overview of a study conducted in the NENA region in 2015-2016 in partnership with FAO, CIRAD, CIHEAM-IAMM and six national teams, each of which prepared a national report. In the six countries under review in the NENA region (Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Mauritania, Sudan and Tunisia), agriculture is carried out primarily by small-scale family farmers, the majority of whom run the risk of falling into the poverty trap, largely due to the continuous fragmentation of inherited landholdings. As such, the development of small-scale family farming can no longer be based solely on intensifying agriculture, as the farmers [...]

The smallholder farmers' dataportrait is a comprehensive, systematic and standardized data set on the profile of smallholder farmers across the world.  It generates an image on how small family farmers in developing and emerging countries live their lives. It is about putting in numbers, the constraints they face, and the choices they make so that policies can be informed by evidence to meet the challenge of agricultural development. Currently, the data portrait provides information for fourteen countries. 

The video shows how the members of the FAO-Dimitra Clubs in Niger and DR Congo have succeeded in improving their livelihoods and highlights the momentum they have created at community level. The video also explores the collaborations between the clubs and other development actors, such as rural institutions. ”Community Mobilization” is part of a series that illustrates the impact of Dimitra Clubs, a successful gender-transformative approach developed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). FAO-Dimitra Clubs are groups of rural women and men who decide to meet regularly to discuss the challenges they face in their daily lives, [...]

FAO’s best-selling 2011 publication, Save and Grow, proposed a new paradigm of agriculture, one that is both highly productive and environmentally sustainable. This new book looks at the application of “Save and Grow” practices and technologies to production of the world’s key food security crops – maize, rice and wheat. With examples drawn from developing countries worldwide, it shows how eco-friendly farming systems are helping smallholder producers to boost cereal yields, improve their  incomes and livelihoods, conserve natural resources, reduce negative impacts on the environment, and build resilience to climate change. The book will be a valuable reference for policymakers [...]

Mobile phones have been shown (though not uniformly) to positively contribute in various ways to rural development, from reducing information asymmetry, improving functional networks, to increasing access to services and finance. Yet a digital gender divide exists. When contrasted with the fact that women compromise 43% of the worlds’ agricultural labor force, this digital gender divide can inhibit rural development. There is substantial exploration of the digital gender divide in the literature. Yet the answers to questions regarding differential access and use of information and communication technologies are mostly inconclusive. This study tries identify the information needs of the rural [...]